Debian's plans for Lenny: KDE 4, IPv6, NFS 4

Debian's Release Team has just dispatched an initial circular on the current status of the next Debian version and release targets.

Belgian Luk Claes posted the "Release Update" message to the Debian Developer mailing list. There are plans to post updates at regular intervals with information on the testing and unstable branches.

Currently, Release Managers are collecting implementation targets for the next generation Debian, codenamed Lenny. To this end they are collecting suggestions by project members, and asking package maintainers and other key developers. A few things have already been agreed, such as complete IPv6 support for all applications, end-to-end support for NFS version 4, and the ultimate demise of the legacy developer tool Debmake. The Release Team has published a text file with a complete list of the release goals.

Another topic that needs some discussion relates to the architectures that Debian Lenny will support: the recertification process is in getting underway. There is a template for suggestions on the Debian Wiki. In addition to this (broken link) Claes has published an email with an overview of new software additions. Some initial components of the next generation Gnome 2.20 are available right now in experimental, and the Qt/KDE team will be publishing initial packages for KDE 4 Alpha in the near future. There are also rumors of a pre-release version of X.org 7.3 due to hit experimental any time now.

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The Debian project has frozen the codebase for the next generation release, Version 5.0 ("Lenny") of its Linux distribution. This rules out any changes to software packages, except where the changes are absolutely necessary for the release.